The year 2013 has been an eventful year for Singaporean cinema and filmmakers, not least for two very special filmmaking talents. Both Liao Jiekai and Boo Junfenghad a memorable year to date, notching up accolades that saw them being credited as joint winners of the President's Young Talents Awards, as well as being commissioned and invited to be part of the prestigious Singapore Biennale this year.

As the Biennale season is upon us, SINdietook the chance to sit down with the both of them to look back at their achievements, reflect upon each other's successes and chat with them about what is in store for their near futures as the year draws to a close.

Kay Wee (K): I think looking back at the
year 2013, as filmmakers and artists, both of your milestones and trajectories feel
very similar, as if they were running on parallel lines. Belonging to the same generation of prominent Singaporean filmmakers, both of you were selected
to be in the President's Young Talents (PYT) exhibition this year, were the two winners
of the subsequent PYT Credit Suisse Artist Commissioning Award, got invited to participate in the Singapore Biennale, had both of your two art works exhibited in the same compounds concurrently, and both
of you are also developing your sophomore feature films at the moment. Let’s go
back to the beginning first. How did your involvement in the PYT
awards actually come about?

Jiekai (LJK): For the PYT awards, basically…I think Junfeng
and I are probably quite similar la, because it's the same type of exhibition.
So we were invited to a portfolio presentation to a selected external panel that were not from the Singapore Arts Museum. And then, I don’t know how they nominated us or chose us,
they just asked us to come and we went, presented and later they told us we are
chosen to participate in the PYT show this year. And then, we were given a
budget and a very, very short run up time to present a new work at the arts
museum.

Junfeng
(BJF): So what happened is…for me it was Cheo Chai Hiang (Visual Artist and
Local Conceptual Art Pioneer), he saw 'Sandcastles' (Boo Junfeng, 2010) and he liked it and he thought it might be interesting for me to explore a
different realm, because I’ve just been concentrating a lot in narrative
filmmaking. So I think after that, he made the recommendation and I was invited
to the panel presentation. It was really just to present my short films, talk
about the thought processes behind them, the ideology behind them and to see if they are suitable for visual arts
or their showcase. I thought it's quite interesting because you know, the both
of us are filmmakers and they chose us to be involved. So that was the first
time I was ever actually even involved in anything visual arts related. I enjoy
going to museums and all that, but I've never done anything for a gallery space
before.

K: So how were the experiences of exhibiting in
a museum, as compared to maybe the cinemas, different for you? Does it change
the way you work, in terms of your approach towards your ‘museum works’ this year?

Boo Junfeng and his PYT work 'Mirror'Photo courtesy of SAM

BJF: Well,
for 'Mirror', I wanted to create something that was still
cinematic, because that was what I knew or something that I understood. But it
was maybe the idea of…expanding it to just two screens, and allowing both screens
to sort of interact with one another. And it's inspired by the idea of a ‘split’,
in history and in the two realities of these characters, playing with the idea
of that. It’s conceptual. It was more conceptual than what I’m used to. Usually
when I start with a film I start with a character or a subject matter. But in
this case I had to force myself to look at it in a more conceptual level: how
the idea can be represented in a space rather than it being simply within the
frame of a film.

Liao Jiekai and his PYT work 'Brothers Quarters'Photo courtesy of SAM

LJK: The context of showing the work definitely affects the way I conceive of the project. The moving-image is a durational medium. When I make a work, I craft an audio and visual experience for the audience through time. When I make work for the cinema, I focus on the film itself, to create that 4th dimension for the viewer to engage in. In a museum, space becomes another factor other than time, because the audience can walk around the space, interact with different elements, something that won't happen in a cinema.

For 'Brother's Quarters', I look at my work as a form of intervention. Firstly, I intentionally isolated my work from the rest of the exhibition by building a wall with a sliding door (which really is a door because of safety protocols, if not I rather it be a wall), making it difficult for the audience to locate the piece, so when they found it, it became some form of a hidden chamber that they walked into. I used many elements to create the installation: wall texts, audio, archival floorplans, 16mm film running on loops, lighting and even a making-of video of the work. For me, 'Brother's Quarters' is about laying bare my process of creating the work, the interviews I did with formal SJI students (one of which includes improvisational music by Leslie Low), the process of working with 16mm celluloid film - a dying medium, and the durational aspect of having to maintain and transform the work over the nine months long exhibition. At the end of the show, only one projector is working, there is a new corner of the room dedicated to broken projectors and burnt film strips, and I opened up the sliding door to create an open passageway to link up Brother's Quarters to the rest of the exhibition.

LJK:The title of my work is 'Bukit Orang Salah', which means “Island of Misfits”. A few years ago
I started writing a screenplay for a film to be made about islands, but not
specifically about St John’s Island. I’ve always been interested in all these
outlying islands.

At first I was
thinking about Pulau Ubin because I used to go there very very often, like ten, twenty times a year, to camp or to do various things. But St John’s Island is still
kind of a mystery; in fact it’s become like a memory, because I remember going
there when I was in primary school. I still have very vivid memories of the
place.

So I just
went to do like a recce trip, to find out whether it was a possibility, to just
see the place. So I went, and I was very fascinated by how it hasn’t changed.
What I remember it being in the 90s still remains the same, unlike many parts
of Singapore—even Pulau Ubin is completely different from what it used to be,
but St John’s Island never changed, from what I remember.

Well actually, one thing did change, it was merged together with three islands.
So after more research I found out that there was actually a proposal to turn
the entire chain of islands into something like Sentosa Cove. In fact their
reference was Venice. But it didn’t become like that. In fact, they built a
very nice harbour and then they renovated the roads and they connected all
three islands together and everything, but they just left it there and it
didn’t happen la, basically. So I thought that place becomes a very interesting
meeting point between what could have been and also what was in the past, and
also because the island has such a strong and important history in our country,
being a quarantine centre, so most of our forefathers were imprisoned there, or
quarantined there for some time.

Liao Jiekai on set for 'Bukit Orang Salah'Photo Credit: Looi Wan Ping

J: So can I say your idea for St John’s Island
was actually already kind of in your mind before the Biennale came about, and
it was always a part of your—

LJK: I
think it was something I always wanted to…it was a point of interest but it
didn’t really become a work until I had to come up with something for the
Biennale. It was during the PYT exhibition that they asked us each to submit a
proposal, and they gave us something like two weeks. So I just made a trip to
the Island, went to the National Library and did all this research, and then I
put together something.

J: How about you, Junfeng? Was your Singapore Biennale piece 'Happy and Free' something that you
conceptualised from scratch or is it something that—I wouldn’t say it’s part of
an agenda—but are these themes that
you’ve always wanted to present, and perhaps this was a convenient platform for
you to realise this?

BJF: I
remember they were also asking me to come up with an idea, I can’t remember at
which stage, but I was in Jerusalem for a film lab, and in between the
mentorship sessions and writing and all that, I was forced to come up with this
idea. So I was just staring at the screen and because the Biennale theme is “If
the world changed”, I was just toying with the idea of…I guess for me the
starting point is always Singapore, so what, how different might this place be.
It was actually from the theme that this “what if” concept came about, and of
course then I was looking at the different points in Singapore’s history; what,
which specific point did I want to cover, which I thought was interesting…

So I
thought of independence, and most obvious thing was between 1963 and 1965
there’s actually a period that is still quite under-represented in how we
understand history. If you think about it, it’s essentially the most crucial period
of Singapore right? How Singapore came to be, because we were supposed to be part of Malaya and that didn’t work out. So
when I submitted the proposal “What if Singapore was different, was still a
part of Malaysia, what would a propaganda video today look like?” and this was
tied in to the idea that if we hadn’t separated, 2013 would be the 50th
year of merger, so then it must be a big year, right. This year would have been
such a big, big year for the golden jubilee and since the Biennale is to happen
around the same time I though it’d be interesting to explore that.

As I was
working on the idea I started asking people about what Singapore might look
like and all that. A lot of people seemed to feel, the overwhelming response I
got was that "Oh, we will be worse off! We will at most be like a Penang". We
tend to see ourselves being lesser if we had remained. While there might be
some truth in that I can’t help but feel that believing in that is also
subscribing to what I call the “1965 narrative” because after this separation,
we want to believe that we can make it. “There was a time when people said that
Singapore can’t make it but we did”, right? So that comes in a song that was
written and so I can’t help but feel that this belief is also a part of that
narrative.

Boo Junfeng on set for 'Happy and Free'Photo Credit: Wilfred Weegee

So how do I
want to break that down, and suggest something that perhaps challenges people’s
idea of what Singapore is and what it
has become, and then on top of that, I remember Alfian Sa’at, a good friend of
mine, once telling me about this album of songs that a friend of his passed to
him, and when I got that album of songs and I heard all these songs that
celebrated merger, in 1963, and how this album basically vanished after 1965,
and this was commissioned by the Ministry of Culture in Singapore. So if that narrative from 1963, which I’m hearing
from the songs, was to continue till today, what that might be? It just opens
so many possibilities but again in defining this alternative history, I had to
really, really narrow it down and it helped that I was framing it as propaganda,
I was framing it as something like a National Day type of thing so I could very
narrowly define this narrative and then inadvertently it kind of then subverted
the idea of national, our national day celebrations and the idea of nation, the
construct of a nation and what it is.

So it was a
very, very interesting process for me. On September 16 I went to KL on the day
of merger. It was Malaysia Day and I heard from people what their idea of Malaysia
Day was, and to a lot of people there, Malaysia Day was the more inclusive day,
because it was the day when Sabah and Sarawak also came to be a part of
Malaysia. Malaysia Day became almost a reaction to Merdeka Day, which was
actually the independence of Malaya, which was for a long time the national, the independence day of Malaysia, but
Malaysia Day only in recent years came to prominence because people wanted
something more inclusive and so now they sort of have two national days,
Merdeka Day and Malaysia Day and of course in Singapore apart from August the 9th
we don’t celebrate or we don’t talk about any of these other days, which were actually a part of our history,
especially Sept 16. So, these are some of the things that came to my mind as I
was researching for the piece.

K: So in terms of both of your Biennale works, I
observed these “audio-centric extensions” out from the frame of the moving visuals into
the physical space itself. Like for example, in terms of Junfeng’s work, there’s this
whole participatory and interactive aspect of the karaoke element in place. So,
tell me why did you choose to make it as such, or make your installation more “fun”,
so to speak? What was your intention?

BJF:I wanted people to sing the song and perhaps
feel how awkward and funny it is to utter those lyrics, to sing those lyrics
out loud. To say lines like “happy and free, in a bigger family, equal and
free, with merger and Malaysia”, how awkward it feels to sing lyrics like that
today, and why. I think the complexity of just that sentiment is very interesting
and that is actually at the core of my work, what the piece is about.

K: As for Jiekai, in your 'Bukit Orang Salah', you added
three different sound design layers, on top of the one imbedded into the film
itself. Why this decision to experiment with different audios from different
channels in the gallery space?

LJK:Actually one of my initial proposals to the
Biennale was that I wanted to hear different sounds in different parts of the
room but it’s quite technically difficult to achieve that and in fact I wanted
something like you go close to the wall, you hear different sounds in different
parts of the room, because I wanted to explore the more interactive components
to showing a video work in the gallery space. So I approached Bani Haykal (Sound Artist and Musician) to do the sound design, and he actually suggested
something very similar to my initial proposal, which was having different
sounds in different parts of the room.

We had a
very short incubation time. We had only a bit more than one month lead up to
work on the sound. And actually Bani is very busy, so most of our dialogue
happened via email. He sent me an email questionnaire, like 30 interview
questions, very, very long, and at that time I was in Indonesia and I wrote a
reply and from these email conversations he gleaned about three or four
different themes, in which he used to compose different soundtracks to the film
and those different themes are presented in the different headphones that you
can pick up at the three different stations.

The filmmakers and the SINdie correspondents during the roundtable interview

K: So I’ve chanced upon some articles and interviews
on the both of you and Jiekai, you’ve always been termed as both a filmmaker and visual artist, but
interestingly for yours Junfeng, you are usually termed as simply a filmmaker, even in the PYT or Biennale
context this year. So what do you guys think of these labels and where do you guys
think you stand in between being an artist
or/and filmmaker now? Should there even be a
distinction in the first place?

BJF: I’ve never been called an artist until this
year. Haha. Even in my engagements with say, Arts Engage, and all these organisations
where we talk about arts policy, about art making, about the art making
community in Singapore, it’s quite often artists
and filmmakers, so it’s always sort
of a slight separation but only this year because my work is in a gallery I
became an “artist”. To me it doesn’t really matter. At the core of what I do…I
see myself making films in whichever form. I don’t really care. My interest is
still in narrative films but doing works like that actually opens my mind and
broadens my view of what art is and what filmmaking can be as well so it’s been
very educational.

LJK: For me these labels are not important also. My
background is in visual arts. I paint, and my first video was actually not a
film, it was a video installation, at the Singapore Arts Museum also. So I kind
of move in between different ways of showing the world, whether is it in a
gallery or whether is it in a cinema. I mean sometimes I call myself a
filmmaker or I call myself an artist and it’s really out of convenience, so
people don’t get—it’s really subscribing to a way that people box up or people
label things but personally I don’t believe in that. I think that’s not
important. But I think it’s important to understand the expectations of the
audience when they come into an art show and when they come into a cinema,
because they’re very different.

BJF:Actually, I mean…among the
filmmakers in Singapore, a lot of them, whom I have respect for, they tend to
be rather multi-disciplinary, people like Ho Tzu Nyen, Brian Gothong Tan,
Jiekai, even like Tan Pin Pin also. If filmmaking is but a medium of
expression, then you know…we wouldn’t narrow that field of vision so much. We
would be keen to explore if given the opportunities.

J: Speaking about labels, do you ever feel
pressured by the manner you wish to present yourself as a filmmaker, with regards to aligning and marketing yourself between the so-called distinctions of
“arthouse” and “commercial” for example? Let’s say five, ten years down the
road you want to make a commercially successful film, do you think it’s
important for you to present yourself in the theme / agenda of a certain label?

BJF: I don’t think so. I mean, first of all I’ve
never believed that something critically acclaimed and something with mass
appeal has to be mutually exclusive. If you take Ilo Ilo (Anthony Chen, 2013) as an example, it is a good film, and
of course I think the Singapore public—to many in the Singapore public—they’re
only starting to be exposed to films that are perhaps different from the usual
mainstream fare that they get but I think that’s precisely the function—okay,
not the function but one of the
functions—of films like that, it helps in raising cultural literacy, it helps
in opening people’s minds so that film doesn’t have to be just about
entertainment, there can be other forms of films to watch and if you’re talking
about being like an artist vs. being a filmmaker and all that. The labels aren’t
really so important, personally I just let the press go with whatever they want
to call me, or whatever the PR company / marketing team wants to call me / the
work or whatever. I mean, if I don’t agree with it I might resist it, but I
don’t really care la.

J: For me, it’s interesting to note that for Ilo Ilo when the posters first came out
in Cannes, they looked more art-housey. But when the poster was then modified
to give it a more heartland commercial movie look (with the cartoon drawings and
all), that to me was a form of succumbing to the market and fitting into labels
to make the movie look more accessible.

BJF: I
think that exercise was an interesting one. When I first heard they were going
to do that, I thought that was interesting because what you want to have is a
foot in the door. To have a Cannes label on it, for the masses, may not mean
anything. In fact, sometimes it might mean, “Oh, this must be a boring art
house film”. So what if we break it
down, what if we market it to be a more ‘palatable’ film and see what kind of
audiences it attracts. It is an interesting exercise but it is also a
double-edge sword, because ultimately it is not a Jack Neo film. If people went
in with these expectations, they could either be pleasantly surprised or disappointed.
And the word of mouth from that may not be good, because we might be targeting
the so-called ‘wrong’ audience, as much as we do want this ‘wrong’ audience to
give it a try.

JS: (To LJK) What’s your view on this?

LJK: I
certainly liked the original poster more. But like what Junfeng said, it’s a
marketing tool. It’s like trailers. Trailers don’t represent the film at all. I
made my 'Red Dragonflies' (Liao Jiekai, 2010) trailer using
many out-takes. I mean, there were
several out-takes that I liked but could not put it in the film. So I think a
film can be very different from all the devices, means and labels from how
people try to market it.

BJF: For
some of us, where the ‘mission’, so to speak, is to really expand the audience
to different kinds of cinema, these steps are ultimately necessary. Because otherwise
you would always just have that split between what is art-house and what is
so-called commercial. And the audience will also be split and clearly, the
art-house audience will always remain that minority and you will never be able
to make films that are critically acclaimed with a sizeable audience. So in
that endeavour to expand our audience, these steps are necessary. So even if people
walk out of the cinema feeling they were short-changed for whatever reasons, at
least there is a film that they have seen and judge for themselves, and
hopefully in the future they can give films like that another chance.

K: As an observer and an audience, I actually
find lots of similarities between both of your works. Referencing both your
first feature films (Sandcastles & Red Dragonflies) and the two works presented at PYT (Mirror & Brothers Quarters) and the Singapore
Biennale (Happy and Free & Bukit Orang Salah), there was to me this common theme of “looking back” and always this
heavy historical element attached to them. So can you tell me more about what
drives you to make your works and what are both of you normally inspired by?

BJF: I don’t think it’s just confined to us. I mean in general, if you look at a lot of filmmakers in Singapore, there is always a desire, whether consciously or not, to look back. Perhaps, it speaks of a kind of society we live in and the kind of changes we are going through and the kind of physical changes we experience and the things, places and the memories that have been lost as a result. It’s just reclaiming a lot of that and an attempt to immortalize some of these either places, or sentiments, or emotions. (pause) I was also hearing from the curators of the Biennale that in fact, it’s not just confined to filmmakers. A lot of the works from the Singaporean artists are about the past, like Lai Chee Kien has a work on the National Theatre reconstructed and Royston Tan’s one is also about the Capitol Theatre, so it’s always about these things that we have lost.

Aditi (A): I observed that most of your works
look at the past but they don’t necessarily take a sentimental view at it. But I
feel like there is a national obsession with nostalgia at the moment. Do you
have any takes on this and do you consciously try to be more objective when
dealing with the past?

LJK: I
actually think that nostalgia can be dangerous because you cannot always be
dwelling and thinking that the past is better than the present or the future.
So, I don’t want to sentimentalise the past. That’s never my intention. I agree
with Junfeng that it’s not just us who are dealing with these narratives of the
past. Even if you look Singapore films in the past ten years, there were a lot of
nostalgic elements. Even when we make films that are contemporary, the
production designer will always like to find things that are vintage, cause things
that are old attract us? But I will be quite careful with how I deal with it. I
don’t like to evoke nostalgia just for the sake of sentimentalizing it.

K: Okay, so now if you have to ask each other one question, what would it be?

LJK & BJF:
(awkward smiles) Haha…erm…

LJK:Maybe I ask first la. I think one thing
that I thought about when I looked at 'Happy
and Free' was that it resembles some kind of an imagined National Day video
but you were also involved in NDP before. So how do you see these two different
experiences? Because when you were involved in the real NDP two or three years
ago, you were constructing a certain narrative that was relevant to present day
Singapore or that kind of, say…propaganda. So how do you balance with what you
think Singapore is and what the organisers want the public to think, and then
comparing it to this particular work that you made?

BJF: I
actually didn’t do the National Day videos. I did the multimedia for National
Day Parade (NDP) 2010. When I was doing that, I laid it out quite clearly to the
committee that I wanted to present something that felt real. I wanted
sentiments that were real. For example, I posed a question of what the five
stars represent, actually I had a whole chunk of people who went blank and they
got it all wrong. Apparently, several people think ‘prosperity’ is one of the 5
stars. So that to me was an interesting exercise because I interviewed a lot of
people. And subsequently when I did the multimedia for the 'Fear
of Writing', a play by Tan Tarn How under Theatreworks,
I did exactly the same thing. I asked very similar questions and that was when
I was allowed to put in all the wrong answers people gave. Like I had a lot of people
saying ‘prosperity’. So for the NDP
version, I showed that people didn’t know and they laughed. When you have
30,000 over people laughing at the same time at how they also didn’t know, it binds people la, if you know what I mean.
Because there is some truth and it was the truth that I was interested in.

Perhaps the
closest I have come to in making something that looks like a National Day music
video was actually this year’s Pink Dot campaign video with the song ‘Home’
performed by Dick Lee. I was examining what home means to these characters in
the video (who are LGBT) and how that is presented with a song like ‘Home’
means and resonates with people. So, I would say these videos are like part
advertising, because we are ultimately trying to evoke something, trying to
pull some kind of commonality, in order to propagate an ideology from whoever
is commissioning this piece. So in doing ‘Happy and Free’, I was also toying
with the idea of how a song like this, with lyrics that sound so awkward in
today’s Singapore, when matched with a National Day type of video or even
campaign (I even came up with a fictitious Ministry of Culture and 50th
anniversary event), how is it unimaginable? And if I were to imagine the
unimaginable, how would people respond to it? It’s always an interesting
exercise working on these projects, whether it is NDP or Pink Dot...because
ultimately it is an understanding of the pervading sentiments in society and
how to make use of that to fulfil a certain agenda. That’s what NDP is about,
right?

K: Haha. Okay, your turn to ask Jiekai a
question now.

BJF: Hmm…well, my favourite works of yours are
the ones that seem very deeply personal and I think I mentioned to you before, 'Before the Wedlock House' (Liao Jiekai, 2012), that
piece to me was one of the best short films I have seen from Singapore because
it is so deeply personal and yet it is not indulgent. I could see things from
your perspective and see that love that the video was made for. So it is always
fascinating to see how you present something so personal in a piece of work. Do
the works that you do always come from a very personal place? And how do you
find the balance between what you choose to present and what you choose not to
indulge in?

LJK: For most
of my works, the starting point is always personal. But the more personal it is,
the more difficult it is for me to confront. For instance, for ‘Before the
Wedlock House’, it was done very spontaneously. I didn’t even think about
making a film. The night before, I just decided that I was going to make a
film. The night after I shot it, I shelved it. I did look through the footages
but I didn’t know what to do with it. Then I saw some films that lent me ideas
and strategies that I could use on these. So I thought I could put something
together with them. And that’s how the film came about.

Still from 'Before the Wedlock House' (Liao Jiekai, 2012)Photo courtesy of artist

I think
there are some things that, because they are so personal to you, nobody else
can see them except you. So I think it is also about finding that balance,
because if not, it will look like a video that you made for your own
indulgence, compared to something that can speak to the larger audience. I
also think that sometimes the more personal you get, the more universal it is.
This is because everyone experiences the same things in their own unique
environment in their own way.

BJF: If you
watch a wedding video. Unless they are close friends, you usually do not feel
much for the people inside. But I felt something for your cousin. It was a
happy occasion, but at the same time, you also feel something very poignant
about everything that she said, about your childhood together and the bond you
had.

LJK: I shot
it as a reaction to many wedding videos I see. At some point in time, I got a
bit disillusioned with wedding videos because they are so formulaic. At one of
my other cousin’s wedding, the videographers were actually staging things. For
instance, they said ‘Now we need the bride to thank the parents’. It was not
planned for and they needed the shot and it seemed they already had a story to
tell already.

K: One last question. I know you guys are in the midst of developing your second features now, so from an audience point of view, what can we expect from them?

BJF: For mine, we have not officially started pre-production but we have started casting for six months now. Hopefully, we can shoot next year, if everything goes according to plan. But the earliest the film will be out will be early 2015. We first presented it two years ago at Rotterdam and subsequently it was invited to the Jerusalem Film Lab, so I went to Jerusalem three times to develop the script with the script analyst. That was very helpful. And back and forth...I feel that this back and forth is really what film development should be, like I really properly went through the process and quite often it is very challenging. Well, writing is a very solitary process, but then to have these people enter this world of yours, dissect everything, analyse everything, put everything back for you and help you discuss it through...it really, really does something quite magical to the script. It's always a learning process.

LJK: In my case, I've already shot the film, am editing it right now and it's been an editing hell la. The analogy I have been giving people is that it's like a 50,000 piece jigsaw puzzle that has only seen the sky. You know, when you do jigsaw puzzles, the sky and the forest and the sea are the most difficult parts right? So I think I am still trying a lot of permutations, but I am also working with two other editors so we are trying out different ways of cutting it together. I realize for my longer projects I could never...after I shoot it, I can never really edit it to the script. Somehow it just transforms beyond the pages. Because sometimes when I shoot I deviate a lot, so it feels like I am finding the film in the sea of footages. So it can be quite painful.

BJF: Haha. But when it emerges it can be quite beautiful la.

LJK: Hahaha. I don't know, haven't seen the light yet. Very far away still. The film's setting is very similar to my Biennale piece, but it is also very different. It is a romance story that takes place in two different eras, that's all I will say for now.